Fear Is A Killer Of Dreams

My first post on our travel blog. Wow, I have a lot to catch up you all up on. Lets start at the beginning. …

It seems everyone has the dream to travel the world, similar to the dream of a child becoming an astronaut when they grow up. Did that happen? Well…I’m all grown up and have never been an astronaut. Have you?

I actually did want to be an astronaut when I was a child. In 5th grade while living just minutes from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, I had a thirst to go to space camp.

I didn’t even care if I had to live off freeze-dried food…I wanted to go into space! Well, I don’t know why that didn’t happen. Probably because my parents couldn’t afford it, or because I quickly changed my tune.

Changing my tune from astronaut, to becoming a baby-sitter so I could make kids eat green beans like my sitter did, or to become a Marine Biologist because I quickly fell in love with the manatee family (Sebastian, Pixi and Scar) living in the canal in my back yard.

It seems that as a child we change our minds. The one thing that has resonated in me is getting to know this world. Ever since, I didn’t care about play dates with friends, I wanted to strap a back pack on and just experience the land!

What makes us not do what we dream of doing? Fear? I think so. I’ve wrote about fear once before in a blog post from June 2008, lets recap:

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Let’s talk further about fear. The upside and downside of fear according to Kim Kiyosaki in the book “Rich Woman”:

“Fear has it’s upside. Fear alerts us to possible life-threatening situations…there is a markedly positive side to fear. There is also a destructive side to fear. While fear can warn us of life-threatening events, it can also be a killer – a killer of dreams, of opportunities, of our own personal growth and passion, of living our life to its absolute fullest.

For me, fear is what was holding me back to wanting to travel. Fear was a killer of my dreams, of my opportunities, of my own personal growth and passion, of living my life to it’s absolute fullest. I had so many fears…fear of what I would do with my possessions when traveling. What would my friends and family think? How can I afford to travel? How will I make money while traveling? What will I do with my animals (I have 3 cats and a dog) whom I love like children? What if I get hurt overseas? What if I get lost? Not to say that these aren’t legitimate fears…but really, it’s so silly to let them get in my way!

SO, over the next few months I’ll be giving you the full course meal on travel – not just the main course of preparing to travel, NAY, I’ll give you ALL the courses of how my husband and I prepare & actually DO travel. Not just a few blog posts to guide you, but probably, and more predictably, a comedic real world step-by-step process of what we are doing to prepare for our travels!

~Shawna Meyer